Thank you

I resectfully disagree on that particular point. I have spoken with helpdesk people based in India and their English was very difficult to understand. I'm sure there are good ones but so far my experience has not been satisfactory. My own bank here in England has a helpdesk in England. I think it is very sad that some English companies use people in other countries for their helpdesks, presumably because of cost.

Having said that I completely agree with others who have said this is a fantastic achievement and all those involved are to be congratulated. I too hope that all goes well.

I can't agree with the suggestion that the money would be better spent on improving the health of the country. You could as easily say that about any scientific research - spend the money on the homeless, or aid from the richer countries to the poorer ones. If this was done until all countries were about equal, then we could have a world-wide scientific approach instead of doing these big projects on a country basis.

Sadly, that would never happen. Just like filling up the deserts with solar panels to provide a global power network. Enough sunpower could easily be generated to supply the world's needs, in combination with storage for those times when there is no sun on any desert - which probably never happens! Add wave power and wind turbines in the most suitable places and more power could be generated than is needed by the whole world. However, politics (and terrorists) would make such a sensible idea completely impossible to achieve. Sadly.

Getting close to touchdown day.
Chandrayaan2 Home - ISRO
http://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-home-0

Spacecraft - the NSSDCA - NASA
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=CHANDRYN2

Mission Updates
http://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-latest-updates

One day to go, hope it works well, fingers crossed.

India produces a great number of science minded people.

It would actually surprise me, if India isn't the first nation
to solve the issues of long distance space journeys, terraforming,
and colonization of other planets.

Kudos to India.

Communications lost with Lander at 2.1 km altitude.

The Lander has it's own navigational aids for touch down but with comm loss - Indian Space appears to suspect 'worst case scenario'. It's unclear whether the orbiting unit can take pictures of the landing site. News awaited.

Hi Jaish,
Just wanted to tell you, your posts are teaching me a lot about India.

You are right, All that they have accomplished since getting their Independence in 1947 is amazing.

I know what Crystal is referring to. I have also read about India's ancient civilizations. They were highly advanced.

I tried to look up the names of the 2 groups that I had read about that went to war. I couldn't find what I had read years ago. There were these 2 groups, but it was not the cousin-dynasties mentioned in the Bhagavad-Gita.

It was something else. I just can't remember their names. But the Vedas also show high technology in the past. Flying machines,all kinds of technology, and what appears to be both the description of an atomic bomb going off, and the after-effects.

This is not yet corroborated by current science. I also believe the Indian people,generally, are High-Vibrational. I am glad they are on the rise again, after oppression.

They were once a civilization of Vast potential, and I believe can be again.
As far as Space-travel and whether money should be spent on something else, I don't know. I actually don't know that much about current India.
Sometimes in America, the rest of the World seems so far away to me.

The Mingle site is a good way to learn about how the rest of the world sees things, regular people, not just the news. I am learning from your posts.

Very informative,Jaish, Thank you.

Hello Susan,



Golden words and I suppose we Indians draw inspiration from our ancient writings and so on.

The interesting thing in all this is, if Indians can land on the moon then it inspires many of the developing countries to think, 'what? why not us?' A few students from Nigeria here in my city, ask this kind of questions all the time. In fact one of them asked in a math symposium 'why do Indians look down on us given your colonial past'. And the response was, 'you guys don't get off your a$$'

Crystal had also raised an important question and as I mentioned in my response:
We are a member nation for ITER consortium, a multi billion project on nuclear fission energy in France. it's also an open secret that the moon has vast reservoirs of Helium - 3. Raw material for Fission reactors. So India may continue as a consortium member in this long term venture - 30 to 50 years.

As far as this topic goes, because of the low cost ISRO may notch it as experience. They are investigating causes and what I feel is Lander may've overshot landing site and hard or even soft landed - but into a crater. This may explain loss of communication signals.

Here's the Landing Plan - for a general idea.



(Recall Neil Armstrong had to decide visually on the location, with fuel running out!)

My thanks to Rock, Notbeold, MK, Tom and Rivers for supporting this thread.

And thank you Soufie, my old love!

You're welcome jaish... The plan looks really cool. Any news yet?

enjoyed reading the thread jaish. And Crystal too. :) Interesting stuff.

still no communication with the lander.

Jaish,
I did not think I would be commenting on this thread again, sorry, but you piqued my curiosity about Helium 3.

I love science, well, certain sciences anyway.
I had never heard of using He3 as a fuel product for nuclear reactors.

I looked it up. He3 is extremely rare on earth. It is produced in the maintenance of nuclear reactors.
The sun emits it, but we don't receive it because of our atmosphere. The moon has no atmosphere, and has huge supplies of He3.

Right now, nuclear fission reactors use mostly uranium and it's byproduct, plutonium as nuclear fuel. Nuclear fusion reactors, on the other hand, use mainly isotopes of hydrogen.

Most nuclear reactors are the fission reactors. They create nuclear waste that has to be stored and radiation.

He3 as a fuel source would be much cleaner and safer, for us and the planet.

Since the moon has generous supplies of it, nuclear fusion could be used much more to supply reactors.

I believe nuclear energy will be employed even more in the future.
Whomever owns or has access to the supplies has money and power.

You are right. The whole power-dynamic of India as a nation could change, substantially, in their favor.

But they already have steep competetion. I read that many nations are trying to get holdings on the moon.

Adds a whole different dynamic to whether it's beneficial to India to have space travel to the moon.

Very Interesting Jaish. Thanks again

Great thread, thanks to jaish and everyone else.

As you would know, this has been an unprecedentedly (to me) emotional set of events for many Indians and a lot many others as well. It is amazing how this is bringing so many peoples together, at least a little in the same vein as 50 years ago.

While I understand the huge odds stacked against total success of this mission, there is always a hope that ISRO made very little mistakes and will be vindicated even further.

I wonder why ISRO has not yet published any more images from the orbiter. Also, I didn't hear anyone mentioning hopes of seeing the landing site through the orbiter's camera. Any idea why? Maybe I am not aware of the typical delay between acquiring and publishing the images.

I have a very likely stupid thought; given the high stakes as detailed in the most recent posts here, is it at all even remotely possible that China has sabotaged either or both of Beresheet and Chandrayaan-2 ? As I said I know this might not make any sense at all but still felt it was worth asking.

(edit) I say China because apparently they are secretive and they already have their Chang'e roving around, so they are easy to suspect. It might be any other country.

There are already some very good hypotheses floating around what might haave happened, including what jaish said about landing in a crater. So I realize my conspiracy theory has very little merit, but I am tempted because both Beresheet and Chandrayaan-2 seem to have failed in very similar ways. Please ignore.

Hello BirGuy,
In failure analyses, every thought, however remote the possibility; counts. But i don't think Chang's orbital path covers the South Pole.

Let us say ISRO forms a checklist and China is included then why leave out Elton Musk? After all he is the nearest competitor for low cost orbiters. And if not today, could happen tomorrow. So in this sense, early failures are very valuable for future fool-proofing.

But I mailed your question to my Chinese girlfriend (from Mingle) and she said, "if US and Russia can collaborate on ISS then why not India and China? After all our two countries have a common and very compelling reason: to feed our 1.3 billion each. Both our countries are running short of natural resources." And I realized why Chinese media is so against India; cause their women prefer Indian men.

Anyway, on a serious note: there already are International Laws on Space Research and Mining (similar to what's going on in Antarctica) - so one may expect all countries in their own long term interests to fall in line.

With science, what doesn't work is often just as important, if not more important than what does work.

In life, we learn some of the most important lessons when we fail.
Its called "WISDOM".

Thanks jaish, as usual each reply of yours is further enlightening.

On another note, while praise is pouring in to ISRO from every corner, some Pakistani leaders are making noises as can be expected. Not to dwell on that part, it reminds me how sad it is to have bad leaders as we ourselves do in many parts of India. So many Pakistani citizens have come out in support of ISRO that it makes me think these are the people who help keep hope alive for the common man well into the future. Your note about India and China collaborating reminded me of this.

Well said. The earlier we realize the value of trying and failing, all the more better for us as individuals and as societies etc.

Shame, as tom says, much is learnt by things that go wrong.
Just look at the space shuttle and how much was put into that and a silly little o ring made it fail.

True, so the least we can hope rightaway is the development of better telemetry, triaging techniques and improved quality control.